Michael Weiss is the Research Director of The Henry Jackson Society, a foreign policy think tank, as well as the co-chair of its Russia Studies Centre. A native New Yorker, he has written widely on English and Russian literature, American culture, Soviet history and the Middle East. Follow @michaeldweiss

“Revolution in danger” was the title of a collection of essays by Victor Serge, a Russo-Belgian anarchist who helped the Bolsheviks seize power in 1917, and then helped them defeat the Whites in the Russian Civil War, before becoming one of the fiercest and smartest critics of Stalinism. Serge died in exile in Mexico in 1947, a few years after an ice-axe landed in Trotsky’s skull, and several after he fell out with the Old Man on matters of doctrine and strategy. Serge is that rare figure from the 20th century: a radical witness to epochal events who exhibited enough moral courage to call out his own side for its "ideological psychosis". He may have also invented the term “totalitarian” to categorise a regime which he helped bring into being. Serge is a perfect model, in other words, for the people of Egypt.

Today the world saw Hosni Mubarak, an enfeebled and waxy-looking dictator, hauled before a court in Cairo on a stretcher encased in a metal cage, pleading his false innocence against the charges of mass murder. If found guilty, he'll be executed. Mubarak’s loyal helper, Field Marshal Mohammed Hussain Tantawi, now leads a de facto military junta that governs Egypt and walks a fine line between appeasing the hopeful de jure government of the Muslim Brotherhood and keeping Coptic churches unburnt and foreign embassies unstormed. Meanwhile, 10,000 new arrests have been made since Tantawi took over, with most of those defendants never seeing their days in court. One Egyptian blogger, Maikel Naibil, got three years in prison for writing an article entitled, “The Army and the People Were Never One”.

Robert Fisk calls Tantawi’s reign of stasis “the revolution betrayed” (these Communist allusions can't be helped, can they?) when in fact that reign, also known as Mubarakism without Mubarak, rubbishes the notion of any revolution to begin with. The first go-round was a coup dressed up as a victory for democracy. The real revolution will come later, and signs of its political nature are everywhere apparent.

Indeed, as Mubarak whispers defiance in the dock, the crowds outside grow more ambitious and candid in their demands for the Egypt they’d like to build. Another Tahrir Square protest camp was set up at the weekend. To quote from the New York Times: “‘Islamic, Islamic,’ went a popular chant. ‘Neither secular nor liberal.’” The Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists formed a baggy coalition of activists who don’t want to miss this crucial opportunity to show the young liberals of Facebook and Twitter who’s boss. One 28-year-old accountant was quite straightforward with the NYT: “It’s simple. We’re stronger than any other force in the country, and we’ve made that clear on this day.” Armin Rosen, writing from Cairo at The New Republic, says that a 19-year-old university student had been chased early in July by Muslim Brothers who called him a “takfir” (an unpleasant term for an Islamic apostate).

There were even plays on all the old slogans from six months ago. “Hold your head up high, you’re Egyptian” saw the national identifier replaced with the word "Muslim". “The people want to topple the regime,” a saying lately co-opted by the people of Syria, has now become, “The people want to apply God’s law.” Tantawi, too, has lately been fast-tracked for retirement.

It took about eight months, after the tsar abdicated, for Lenin to storm the Winter Palace. The Egyptians are more or less on schedule.